and the cracks begin to show
by exorcisingemily
Summary: By twelve, Chuuya would kill for him. By fourteen, Chuuya would go to war for him. By sixteen, Chuuya was ready to die for him. By eighteen, Chuuya was ready to destroy everything to save Dazai. And isn't that just the problem.
1. the silent cathedrals of melancholy

_It is curious, but the cathedrals of melancholy are not necessarily demolished_  
 _if one can replace the vulgar "What a messy business it is to be fallen for" by the more literary_  
 _"What uneasiness lies in being loved."_  
\- Osamu Dazai

 ** _Ten Years Ago_**

"I'm going to kill you some day, you… you… _overgrown jackass!_ "

Round cheeks and auburn hair, blue eyes too wide to be intimidating even narrowed as they are in adolescent rage, at twelve years old and still clinging to the baby fat of youth Chuuya Nakahara is far too adorable to be intimidating. Maybe the blood splattered across his clothes and the way the ground is trembling around him should be off-putting, but honestly Dazai is pretty sure that just enhances the effect.

Dazai swipes the back of his hand across his bruised and split lip, smearing blood across the clean white bandages that wrap around his fist, and then ignores the sting and grins wider down at his half-pint little compatriot as he pushes off of the wall he'd been leaning against.

"Maybe you will someday. But you'd have to beat me first, chibi. A little sucker punch like that doesn't count. And a bare fist, too, against _me_. You know better."

He taps his fingertip to Chuuya's nose just to irritate him, and for the amusement of watching his friend's billowing jacket suddenly deflate again, flapping down to smack the back of his ankles, nearly dragging on the ground without his power to fluff it out around him. Chuuya's like a small kitten ruffling its fur up to seem larger. Honestly, _adorable_.

Stepping daintily over the first of the bodies in their wake, Dazai hums to himself as he turns over the next one with the toe of his shoe, tutting at what Chuuya made of the enforcers sent after them, the shattered bones and disfigured forms-signs of small fists swung with unnatural force and gravity crushing them in upon themselves. "Messy."

"Five guys and you didn't even lift a finger, Dazai, so stop complaining." Chuuya is going to be petulant for at least another hour over that, but really it was the best strategy. When these guys started tailing them a block away from HQ, it only made sense to play the panicked children and let themselves get backed into a corner. Dazai standing 'protectively' in front the smaller boy focused their attention on him, and by the time Chuuya launched himself off of Dazai's shoulders in a bizarre parody of leapfrog, heavy fists and feet flying, Dazai figured he could handle the muscle on his own.

While it's true he disappeared a few minutes to let Chuuya deal with a small handful of thugs, it's not entirely accurate to say he was totally idle. After all, it's the first time someone's sent an ability user after them. When he was the first to run, of course Dazai had to tail him. It was exciting!

He'd tried to compel Dazai to sleep. Not the most impressive ability, but proof that they were supposed to be taken alive as leverage against the Port Mafia executives raising them. His unconscious body is crumpled in the back of the black van parked at the mouth of the alley. Mori may have a use for him, weak ability or not, and if nothing else he knows how his guardian loves prying information out of people.

Dazai takes a shuddering breath as he stares down at the crumpled face and sightless eyes of the body at his feet, fixing his blank smile back on as he spins on his heel to watch Chuuya drop an emptied wallet on a corpse, tucking a wad of cash into the pocket of his coat. "The Boss is going to want to see this."

Chuuya raises too-large blue eyes back to stare at him, lips twisting faintly, and for this moment both boys are far older than their years. Even at twelve years old this is far from the first scene of carnage either of them have been on, or the first time Chuuya's had blood on his hands. They had squeamishness trained out of them. But this slaughter is nothing compared to what the Boss will demand in retaliation for the attempt on them.

"Does he need to? We dealt with it." Chuuya's tone is soft, the hushed voice of a young child, but the sentiment is deceptively dangerous. They could just make this all disappear. Let Chuuya chivvy the corpses into the van, and then Dazai could get behind the wheel and dump it in the bay and return back as if nothing happened.

But the aftermath, when Mori finds out… somehow Mori _always_ finds out.

Dazai watches Chuuya as he slowly pulls his cell phone out of his pocket in answer, and Chuuya's shoulders tense under his oversized coat, chin rising stubbornly as he braces himself visibly and nods curtly, turning back to shaking down the corpses without further protest. They'll both pretend he hadn't made any reference, no matter how veiled, to the Boss's declining sanity. They can leave it for the Executives to decide.

At twelve years old, they're already foot soldiers in a war they have no say in. Worse, they are living weapons, objects to be deployed wherever the mafia sees fit, coveted by other organizations, useful only if they go where bid and act when their trigger is pulled. They are objects, and when Mori strides into the alleyway minutes later, seeming to melt out of the evening darkness around him, he stares at Dazai as if he's a possession. His thumb presses against the cut on Dazai's lip as his smirk curls and his eyebrow raises questioningly, Dazai stares blankly back at his guardian with all of the expression and animation of a toy, the teasing and smiles he had for Chuuya long gone.

"It's good that you called me." Is there a weight to his words? Does he know that Chuuya considered _not_ calling? Dazai tries not to let the worry show as Mori turns away from him to survey the scene and the petite redhead standing still blood splattered among his kills, watching the change in Dazai thoughtfully before swinging his eyes to Mori. "And you, Chuuya. It's been two years since your guardian has really let me see you. Dazai has been growing like a weed, most of the way to a teenager already, but you…"

Chuuya's eyes narrow into dangerous slits as Mori approaches him, and Dazai shakes his head slightly in warning as he widens his own eyes to capture Chuuya's attention. Chuuya catches the signal and freezes, hand twitching at his side at the effort it takes to go as still as prey. It's harder for the small redhead—it's not in his nature to be still, or quiet, or docile, and he abhors a victim. It was his violent response to predators that revealed his ability to the Port Mafia to begin with. He doesn't understand what Dazai is warning him about now. Dazai hopes he never does.

"You still look so _young_." Mori's fingertip swipes down the curve of Chuuya's cheek, hooking under his chin to tip his head back and look at him, and Dazai only lets his breath out in relief when a feminine voice answers the doctor before Chuuya can spit out the words trapped behind his teeth.

"You know how I believe an innocent face is a precious disguise and weapon." Kouyou Ozaki seems to float into the alleyway, the carnage around them no concern for her even as the scarlet hem of her kimono slides silken through pools of blood. Chuuya takes the opportunity to take a step back away from Mori's touch, into the shadow of his guardian as she folds delicate hands over his shoulders, watching her fellow Executive placidly. "Our boys did well for themselves again, it seems. Is this all of them?"

"There's an ability user in the back of the van, unconscious but still breathing." Dazai answers her, but his eyes are on Mori alone. "He was here to subdue us and bring us back. Abduction, not a hit."

"Interesting. So word has gotten out, but not well enough to keep them from underestimating you both." Mori chuckles, and glances at the bodies, eyes lingering on the emptied wallets near each. Chuuya meets his gaze defiantly, unapologetic for the theft, and Mori smiles indulgently at him. It's the look he gives Elise, the one he used to fix on Dazai, and it's unsettling to see it aimed at his friend. Dazai moves, pulling that stare back to himself instead, picking his way across the corpses to the discarded dagger he saw while taunting Chuuya.

He kneels to hook back the bloodied sleeve covering a meaty wrist, showing the elaborate design that begins at the cuff and doubtless covers his entire body beneath the clothes, the hand-poked irezumi tattoos of Yakuza, and then scoops up the dagger and holds it out hilt-first to Mori as evidence, the sharp blade fraying the soiled bandages of his hand. "Yakuza. Yamabishi symbol on the hilt, so Yamaguchi-gumi syndicate. Their expansion plans must have reached Yokohoma."

Mori is an information broker first and foremost, and for the past years he'd drilled into Dazai how knowledge is power. Perhaps he's not getting the formal education of other twelve year olds, but Dazai _reads_ and _observes_ as if his life depends on it. Because in truth, it does.

Foot soldiers live short, violent lives. Dazai doesn't fear death, but he'd rather embrace it on his own terms, and in a less painful manner than being gutted like a fish on a knife like this, left to bleed out in a back alley as a message to others, anonymous and disposable. He doesn't want that fate for Chuuya, either.

Mori glances at the dagger in disinterest without touching it, nodding slightly at the offered information, and Dazai can see him calculating. Thinking. Planning. When the eyes of the two executives meet over their young charges, Dazai knows they're no longer of interest. "It seems we have… _negotiations_ … to see to. Thank you, boys. We'll have a cleanup crew come to take care of this, and to bring back the ability user."

Kouyou's voice is soft, and her fingers squeeze Chuuya's shoulders, pressing deep into the coat draped over him, a silent communication or command that Dazai can't help but notice and wonder at. "You've done well, little brother. Take Dazai back home and you can both clean up there."

Dazai notes the affectionate nickname with a cool detachment, and meets his friend's eyes when Chuuya plucks his hat back off of the asphalt and plunks it on his head as he strides past bodies towards him. "Come here." He's not ready for Chuuya to grab his forearms and march him backwards onto a scrap of the rusted sheet metal littering the alley, torn off of the walls by Chuuya's ability. Dazai can't quite hide the grimace at being grabbed, and that gives the smaller boy pause, eyes widening for a moment as they flick down to the bandages poking out from beneath his sleeves. He shifts his grip to Dazai's elbows without needing to be asked, a frown creasing his small face, and then meets Dazai's eyes. "Hands in your pockets. Don't touch my skin or I'll drop you."

"I know how _my_ ability works, Chibi," Dazai drawls, smirking to throw off Chuuya's concern, but he can feel the weight of eyes on them, the regard of their elders and the need to be two things at once, two masks in conflict, is twisting him about. He knows what Mori wants him to become, and he knows he's closer every day to it. The nightmares stopped months ago, now, and he feels somehow _less_ in their absence. But he also knows what Chuuya expects to see—his friend is a spitfire, and demands the same in return, but these days Dazai feels hollowed out, a shell for everyone else's expectations. He'll get better at being whatever he needs to be. "Are you sure you can use yours on me at all?"

"I'm not using it on _you_ , idiot." Chuuya closes his eyes in concentration, and the next moment they're _soaring_ , up, away from the carnage, coats snapping around them in the cold air of the atmosphere, the sheet metal a solid ground beneath Dazai's feet.

If he took a step forward, would he plummet to the ground far below? Would Chuuya be able to support him? Would his power drag them both down together? It would be a strange tragedy, two boys, bodies tangled together, dead long before they hit the ground. The idea is strangely intriguing, a fascination that will last far longer than Dazai realizes now… but not like this. He won't make that decision for both of them. Chuuya's grip tightens on his arms, as if he can read the thoughts in Dazai's eyes, and what seems like moments later they're on a balcony, Chuuya slumping as his small body gives in finally to the exhaustion of the fight and flight at last, and that last six inches of space end in a sharp drop as gravity takes hold of them again, the sheet metal clanging against concrete and sending Chuuya stumbling as Dazai grabs and braces him.

Chuuya needs to be stronger. Needs more endurance. He needs to grow up a little more, become harder, stronger, so he's not seen as prey by men like those thugs. By monsters like Mori. They'll work on that together, so they can both survive this life. It's a strange embrace, Dazai wrapped protectively around his friend as if he hadn't left him to slaughter five men for them just an hour before, Chuuya slumped into him as if he hadn't just punched Dazai in the face himself, and Dazai has to taunt to break the moment because he doesn't know what else to do.

Pushing Chuuya back by the shoulders, Dazai flashes a grin, flashbulb bright and candy sweet, and then shoves Chuuya towards the door, sending him stumbling over his cheap shoes and untied laces. "I'm hungry. Make me food. If you can even reach the stove, that is."

Chuuya blinks blue eyes at him, exhausted and strangely trusting even as he sneers at Dazai in return, falling back into their jabs. "You're like a black pit with legs. Make your own food."

They bicker like that for the next two hours as Chuuya patches up his bruised and split knuckles and then grudgingly putting together a lunch for them, Dazai lounging in Chuuya's space as if he owns it, rifling through his things, pocketing some of the expensive chocolates his friend favors just because he can. It's a comfortable dwelling, if formal and obviously to the executive's tastes. Kouyou is caring for Chuuya as if he's family, in her own murderous way, and that's… it's _good_. One of them should have that. But he can't help but be jealous too.

Fed, exhaustion catching up with him, Dazai lets himself be bullied into sitting down on Chuuya's futon and blinks as Chuuya drops down to the floor beside him, the first aide kit at his side and a determined look in his eyes as he makes his demands, shooting a pointed look at the stained coverings on Dazai's arms as he holds a coiled roll of bandages. "Show me."

After a moment of hesitation, Dazai takes the bandage from Chuuya's hand and tucks it into the first aid kit again, smirks, and shakes his head as he unfolds and rises to his feet. "I should head back to the headquarters. Mori will be waiting, and I want to know what the Boss plans."

No... Chuuya is not a child, not really, not any more than Dazai is. Only a few months separate them in age, no matter how quickly Dazai is growing. Baby-faced chibi or not, Chuuya is not innocent, not naïve: even with the difference in approach of their two guardians they're both being raised as efficient and ruthless killers.

But Chuuya isn't _hollow_ yet. There's enough spirit to him that he may never be. So Dazai's not ready to become one the nightmares that helps break him.

Dazai sails out of the door, ignoring his friend's frustration. In a few minutes, Chuuya will doubtless notice the missing chocolates, and the wickedly curved knife Dazai left in their place in payment.

Chuuya will need it, some day.

 ** _Eight Years Ago_**

The sharp point of the blade embeds itself into the wall only an inch away from Dazai's face, quivering there buried deep, red-wrapped hilt still vibrating with the force of a throw augmented by Chuuya's ability and only avoided at the last second.

"A little on edge?"

The quip falls flat as Chuuya rises from his defensive crouch, pulling his hand away from the floor where he was prepared to rip the apartment around them apart to defend himself. In return, Dazai finishes slipping through the jimmied-open window, the hand not hidden by a cast and sling loose and open, deceptively giving the idea of being unarmed. They both know better. Facing each other across the room, all angular lines and sharp edges, the two teens are both blood splattered and ragged, and the room is lit with fire from the explosion that tore away the front of the building, sending the balcony crashing as rubble to the street below.

Dazai and Chuuya are fourteen years old, and have been training beside each other since that first thwarted ambush. Chaos is unfolding all around them as the criminal world tears itself apart. And for all Dazai knows, they may be on opposite sides of a war.

"Is it true?" Dazai can't quite guess at Chuuya's tone, but he doesn't have to wonder at his meaning at least.

"I witnessed it myself." Dazai's grin lights up again for his friend, false and brilliant, but it never reaches his empty eyes. He could be forced to kill Chuuya right here. Right now. And he knows without questioning it that right now, right here, he _could_ kill Chuuya. "The Boss is dead. Long live the Boss. What side is she on?" What side is _Chuuya_ on?

Chuuya spits a curse and stalks across the room, ripping his knife out of the wall and dragging Dazai away from the windows with a grip on his elbow. Dazai doesn't resist—he knows how Chuuya moves, how Chuuya fights, and this is Chuuya being protective, not an attack. "She _hated_ the Boss, you idiot."

Yes. Dazai knew that. He was trained to observe, after all, and beyond that knowing about the motivations of the executives is going to keep him alive one day. But Kouyou also is wary of Mori, and _knows_ what he is. Conspiring against the boss together did not mean she consented to Dazai's mentor replacing him. Already two of the other executives have stepped up to challenge Mori. Their blood is on Dazai's hands, dried to rust on the bandages dangling loosely from his arms.

"I just got the call. The Golden Demon just tore into the HQ. She's probably cutting through the Boss's loyalists. But..." Another explosion rips through the walls of the apartment, too near them to be coincidence, and Chuuya wrenches Dazai around by the arm, drops his grip and hefts a piece of concrete in his hands like it's nothing, rearing back and catapulting it at a bank of black vans with a roar of fury. " _These_ assholes just showed up when I went to grab my coat."

Well, if they're not with Dazai, and they're not with Chuuya, then whoever's interest they're acting in… they are on the wrong side. Dazai taps Chuuya's shoulder and flashes him a grin, all teeth and bite, as he glances out of the torn wreckage of the building just long enough to get all the lay of the land that he needs. "Crimson dragonfly?"

Four years of friendship. Two years of partnership. Long enough for Chuuya to grow into his hat if not his coat, for him to slim down if not shoot up, long enough that the feral grin Chuuya flashes him as they fall into sync is endearingly familiar. They're only alive because they've spent the time to hone their abilities in tandem, and work out shorthand for tactics. "Rain of echoes works better for the surprise."

"Dragonfly for the elevation. Chibi, you _know_ my plans are better."

Chuuya flexes his grip around the knife the way someone else would tap their fingers as they thought, before slapping it hilt-first into Dazai's hand in consent, and he jabs a finger into his chest. "Fine. But stop calling me chibi, you shit."

And then Chuuya flings himself into the open air, yanking his coat around him against the gunfire and increasing its density into a shield as he crashes to the sidewalk below, crushing concrete to a crater around him.

His hat doesn't even twitch in its rakish cant on his head. Imagine having that much power at your fingertips, and always using a fraction of it to keep your hair in place. Dazai's laugh is ripped from him at the ridiculousness of his friend, searing in how it seems to shake away the cold around and within him. The sound is lost in the rain of gunfire on the street, and Dazai takes off across the apartment to ride the fire escape down, tucking the knife against the cast for later and sorting with his uninjured hand through the endless pockets of his coat to grab the right detonators. He knows exactly how this is going to go, and where he needs to be.

They'll meet again at the middle, over the bodies.

Dazai and Chuuya are only fourteen years old. By the end of a long night of brutal infighting, they will be known within the organization as the new Boss's feral dogs.

 ** _Six Years Ago_**

Chuuya jerks awake silently, trained well enough to not give himself away with a sound as his eyes snap open in the darkness, hidden behind the curve of his arm, hand carefully sliding to the knife under his pillow. The knife that's _supposed_ to be under his pillow, at least.

Dazai flicks another fingernail clipping at his partner's ear, carefully trimming back another, the blade glinting in the moonlight and then lamplight as Chuuya suddenly relaxes enough to swing his feet to the floor as he sits up and glowers, resentful of the incandescent bulb.

The auburn bird's nest of sleep tangled hair atop his head actually makes Dazai wish he'd snapped a picture for posterity and future blackmail. "I'm surprised you don't wear the stupid hat to bed." Dazai observes mildly, grin spreading, and he gestures at Chuuya's hair with the knife. "I could fix that for you. You keep this blade _very_ sharp."

"I don't know why you're here, and I don't care." Chuuya snatches at the blade, and Dazai dances back holding it out of reach, arms too long for Chuuya to get it without actually getting out of his bed and climbing the taller boy. "I'm sleeping. Go away."

"You're not sleeping. We have a mission. How do you feel about destroying an entire base with me. Tonight."

At sixteen years old, both of them are too much the soldier for the promise of a mission not to clear the cobwebs away immediately, and the sharp blue eyes that fix on Dazai are cunning, maybe even more bloodthirsty than Dazai himself. Chuuya kept his spirit, cultivated his anger, and trusts Dazai enough to wordlessly accept that there's a solid battle plan when he's woken up without warning.

More than that, he trusts Dazai enough to unleash himself. That is something they are going to need tonight. From the way Chuuya rakes a hand back through his hair (making it _worse_ , Dazai notices), he knows what he's being asked for. "Give me fifteen minutes."

Chuuya rolls out of bed and pads across his quarters in his boxers, and Dazai watches in his wake, the blade unmoving in his hands now, his eyes focused on lean muscle and fair skin as Chuuya disappears into the bathroom. At sixteen, Chuuya is arguably the best martial artist within the organization, and it shows ('arguably' because he's never beaten Dazai, but Dazai has been careful with his reputation and 'best martial artist' is not the title he's going for). At sixteen going on seventeen, though, Dazai has also become irritatingly aware that his best and only friend, who he once thought of as _adorable,_ is already transitioning into something more like _beautiful._

Chuuya's head pops out of the bathroom, a Colgate froth on his lips and toothbrush sticking out of his mouth, hair still ridiculous and an unbuttoned white shirt flapping around him absurdly, and he jabs a finger at the kitchenette. "Make me coffee."

It comes out more like _mame muh kohee_ and thankfully the spell is broken. Chuuya is just _Chuuya_ , and that means he's an irritable argumentative bossy overcompensating pint-sized idiot.

Dazai doesn't even pretend to try making Chuuya coffee. He's still complaining about that by the time they're nearing the drop site, shooting sullen looks at Dazai, hat firmly in place, hair whipping around him in the wind, shirt sleeves rolled up under his tailored black vest and coat abandoned, not a parachute to be seen as they stand in the open hatch waiting for word that they're situated over the base.

"This would be a hell of a lot easier if I were _awake_ right now."

Dazai meets his glare with a meaningless grin, eyes squinted against the bitingly cold air, bandages and coattails lashing around him like tiny whips that sting the skin of his exposed cheeks as he grips the handle beside him, his coat like billowing black wings.

"If you fall asleep, it might make my job easier."

"You couldn't do this job without me." Chuuya scoffs, but he's flexing his fingers like he wants his knife in his hand right now. A knife that's currently tucked into the small of Dazai's back. Chuuya won't need it for this.

"And you can't do _anything_ without me." Dazai counters, mocking and tart, but Chuuya doesn't take the bait. Their earbuds crackle with sound, the start of a countdown, and Chuuya's hand reaches out to snare Dazai's arm.

"Stop me. Before I…" Before the corruption of his ability consumes him. This is not something they've experimented with enough, but Mori is a firm believer in pushing the limits. They finally began to feel out the edges of Chuuya's capabilities only weeks ago, and the sickening crawl of tainted blood across his skin, the way his pupils constricted to pinpricks, the rush of fury through his body like a drug… Chuuya would never let on that it scares him. But Dazai is an observer. Chuuya doesn't have to say it.

Giving him comfort right now is only going to get the two of them killed, and ruin the mission. The thought slithers cold through Dazai's mind, tactical, analytical, impersonal, and his grin is sharp enough to cut. "I'm not stopping you until we complete the mission. How soon that is depends on you. So do the job."

Chuuya's eyes cut towards Dazai, wide and _wounded_ before narrowing to a furious stare. It's not Dazai's fault that Chuuya's held hostage in this by his ability. This is why he's here. Mori gave the orders, and they're going to carry it out. He meets Chuuya's glare, eyes unwavering, mind clear of anything but tactics and practicalities, body waiting to act on orders, and Chuuya hisses a cursed invective then digs his fingers deeper in the meat of his bicep.

"Dead eyed mackerel _bastard,_ " Chuuya mutters, but Dazai doesn't bother trying to figure out what that means as the countdown ends and Chuuya flings them both into the abyss, and they're flying.

No. Better, they're _falling_ , wind tearing at their skin, frost stinging their eyes, and Dazai is so addicted to this. Terminal velocity, great height, he wouldn't even need to worry about the sudden stop he'd be gone long before then. There's a jerk in his motion and Dazai lets himself fantasize for a moment that it's the end, but he knows it's the ripcord of his parachute as Chuuya spits insults at him, letting him go only afterwards, drawing his body in tight as a diver as he matches his descent to Dazai's.

"Don't you dare fucking think about dying on me right now, shithead."

As Dazai sails down to the roof of the base, watching his best friend, his only friend, his _partner_ and his _assassin,_ punch through concrete like it's tissue paper, tearing the void out of himself and into the world, a living, breathing black hole of a man, he knows that they're the stuff of legends already.

Chuuya's blade is sharp in Dazai's hand, and their gang never stood a chance. Eventually they try opening up on him with a machine gun, and honestly people should learn better-their weapons become his weapons, every time. It does slow things down a little, though, cause him to recalculate. By the time he raids their boss's quarters, grabbing the information Mori truly wanted, Chuuya is cackling his glee, eyes mad, nose, ears and tearducts dripping blood down his face in a horrific mask as corruption races across his skin, as he slams his fists together and punches through metal and rends flesh and slings black holes like bombs that consume everything they touch.

He rounds on Dazai, fist raised and no recognition in his eyes at all, and suddenly Dazai understands everything.

In that moment, Dazai is nothing. He knows he's dead inside. He knows what Chuuya saw in his eyes. He knows that he could stand here in this moment, let Chuuya kill him, and Chuuya would die at his side ripped apart by his own abilities. Would it be murder suicide? Double homicide? It's not double suicide. Chuuya has no choice right now because this is not Chuuya, so that doesn't count at all.

But there's the certain knowledge that slots into place in that moment, feet skidding as he's thrown back by the shockwave of one of Chuuya's graviton explosions as it takes out the foundation where he just stood. Chuuya never looks at him as if he's nothing. Of everyone in the world, there is only one person who _might_ follow Dazai into death willingly.

But that needs to be his choice.

They dance, death and destruction, chaos and madness, as Dazai gets closer, drawn by the pull of gravity, the pull of Chuuya. His very first kiss tastes like their mixed blood and Chuuya's tears, like desperation and panic, painful and terrible as they mash together, as Chuuya slumps into him, panting with exhaustion as Dazai's power courses through him, shoving the corruption away, shutting his ability down into the back of his mind again, leaving him exhausted and broken and free of his own madness. He clings to the lapel of Dazai's jacket, dragging him down as he sways and crumples into the wreckage as silence falls around them. Dazai's second ever kiss ends with him being weakly punched across the jaw as they sprawl on broken concrete blocks.

"You _waited_ too long. It was killing me."

He probably means his power. Dazai's grin says he chooses to take it another way, as he hoists Chuuya back to his feet. "Eager, aren't you."

"I'm going to murder you someday." The threat is old, familiar, comforting. Dazai shrugs, Chuuya half tucked under his coat as he braces him so they can pick their way over the carnage to the extraction point, objective complete.

"Probably. But not today."

They are sixteen years old. By the end of the night, they're known throughout the criminal underworld as Double Black, an assassination team that took out an entire base, and entire _gang_ , in a single night. By the end of the week, Dazai becomes the youngest executive in Port Mafia history, and Chuuya is his right hand.

Dazai dreams of death and Chuuya dreams of murder. Together, they're unstoppable. They're invincible.

 ** _Five Years Ago_**

Chuuya's habit of sucker punching him in the jaw is really becoming annoying. His habit of saving Dazai is even worse.

"You stupid fucking idiot." Chuuya's habit of spitting profanity at him is just Chuuya, so he can't really complain. That's like bemoaning that his hair is red, or that his nose sunburns and peels, or that he has short stubby legs like a corgi. Along with the constant profanity, those are just things inherent to Chuuya being Chuuya.

"I'm nothing like a fucking corgi, you dramatic, emo sack of shit."

Dazai may have said part of that out loud. He's never really had an off switch when it came to annoying his partner anyway, and a fresh concussion makes it even worse.

His ribs hurt, his arm hurts, and his ears are ringing, and there is a searing pain in his side and his eye is swollen shut and caked with blood. He's fairly certain Dazai rocketing into him like a cannonball, slamming into him mid-air in a fall, had something to with part of that. It's a shame. He enjoys the falling. His dreams are full of careening through the air, arms clasped around Chuuya as they fall from the top of the Headquarters building, lips pressed together, powers canceled out by their kiss—it would be the perfect way to die.

But now they're firmly on land and tragically still alive and apparently in a very gaudy hotel room, and everything _hurts_.

"That happens when you stand too close to a cliff and set off an explosive, you moron." Both of them know the explosive shouldn't have been enough to blast Dazai off of the cliff. That he'd have thought ten steps ahead and known beforehand that the detonation would catch him as well. Chuuya knows it, and Dazai can hear that knowledge in his voice, the fury and the worry of it, but his petite enforcer still carefully settles him into the hotel bed even as he's giving him a verbal lashing.

"You charged this room to my account didn't you." Dazai is staring dazedly at a hideous lamp as he interrupts the rant and mournfully poses the question, a misshapen lump of a thing with a twisted asymmetrical base that cuts between striped orange glass and polka-dotted teal glass, the shade slapped on top as if to try and hide the atrocity of it. It's horrible to look at, so it's probably custom and that probably means this hideous room is expensive and he is bleeding out on this tacky bedspread. Of course Chuuya charged it to him.

"I'm charging everything from the bar to you, too." Chuuya snipes as he drops a duffle bag onto the mattress beside Dazai, yanking out a first aid kit and scowling down at his supposed superior. In this moment they are twelve years old again, Chuuya armed with bandages and demanding, but this time far meaner and far more bossy. And far more free with Dazai's wardrobe.

"Hey." Dazai swats weakly at Chuuya's hands as he strips off his coat and jacket efficiently, and Chuuya stops draping the fabric over the headboard to glare at him, snarling his response. Worry makes Chuuya angrier. Usually it's amusing, but there's something off about it today.

"I know about the scars, Dazai. I know you think I'm an idiot, but I'm not fucking blind and I know you mummify yourself with these damn bandages. And I've been there every time you've been shot, stabbed, or blown up, since we were _ten_ , so I know you did it to yourself because you're so fucking stuck on this idea of killing yourself. I know Mori stitches you up every time too because no healing Ability can touch you. But the Boss isn't here and I _am_ , and you're going to shut the fuck up and let me make sure you're not bleeding to death just because of your stupid fucking fascination with killing yourself on my watch."

Dazai stares up at Chuuya for a long moment, letting the words process, and does the only thing he can to deflect.

He grins, broadly and brightly.

"Maybe I just don't want _you_ to get any ideas."

Chuuya's roar of frustration is truly impressive from such a small frame. The neighboring room pounds on the wall, and they're lucky Dazai grabs Chuuya's wrist before he can punch all the way through the drywall in return. The gesture snaps Chuuya's focused attention back to Dazai's face, and if looks could kill Dazai would be a crater (looks _can_ kill, but that's not Chuuya's ability. Craters are though, but Dazai's confident now that Chuuya won't even if he could right now. More's the pity.).

"You're too easy to rile up, Chibi." Dazai chides, voice still a lilting sing-song, though he has to break it off to wheeze in a pained breath. Oh, he doesn't like this method, and is going to strike it off of the list now. Too painful. "You could always just…"

"I'm not letting you die." Chuuya wrenches his wrist away from Dazai, face twisted in fury still as he digs deeper into the duffle bag. "I don't care what it takes."

And isn't that just the root of the problem. Dazai would be elated by the two of them dying together and leaving the rest of the world at peace. Chuuya would burn the entire world to the ground and leave the two of them the last men standing in it, if he had to. Dazai dreams of death and Chuuya dreams of murder, and so they will never be on the same page.

Oh, but Chuuya kisses him like he matters. Like he can keep him there forever just with force of will and the press of his lips and the sharp bite of his teeth into Dazai's bruised lips and the weight of his body pressing Dazai's battered form to the bed, knees pinning his wrists down.

Dazai knows a distraction when one is knotting its fingers into his hair and tugging his head to a better angle, knows a ploy when it's restraining him and licking into his mouth and hissing curses against his lips. He can't even pretend to be surprised when Chuuya jabs a needle into his neck, just below the curve of his jaw and above the line of bandages, because of course Chuuya brought knock-out drugs. He probably carries them to every mission.

Dazai wakes hours later tucked under clean sheets and propped carefully with pillows, the soiled comforter tossed to the corner of the room. His hand flies first to his neck then to his wrist, where he finds untouched bandages coiled around himself, still concealing everything from sight. A twisted piece of shrapnel floats in pink-tinged water in the ice bucket on the nightstand, bandages circle his head ruffling his hair and obstructing one eye, and when he peels away the corner of the new square of soft dressing among the tight brace of bandages around his bruised ribs, Dazai sees neat stitches marching down skin stained orange by iodine. Funny. Mori claims to be a doctor, but Chuuya has a steadier hand and more care. By putting Dazai under before he started yanking and cutting and stitching, he can definitely even claim better bedside manner, even with him glaring from across the room with bloodshot eyes.

Chuuya has crashed now, the adrenaline from the mission and Dazai's injury finally wearing out and leaving him with the exhaustion that always follows extensive use of his ability. But even hours later he's not asleep, gun resting on the table at his left side and knife at his right, a glass of amber whiskey in his hand. The sickly yellow light of the hideous lamp pools around him in the gloom, painting touseled auburn hair into licks of fire while leaving pale skin sallow and his eyes fathomless. True to his word, Chuuya has raided the bar, and small bottles of alcohol litter the carpet at the foot of the chair he's curled up in.

"You can relax and stop checking. I didn't uncover anything I didn't have to. Your stupid... not-secret is still safe."

No, it's not a secret. They're not children any more, and Chuuya has known him long enough to understand the way he didn't at twelve years old. Chuuya can guess about the brutal lines of crisscrossing scars that decorate from elbow to wrist on both arms. He can guess that beneath the collar of bandages that he adopted at fourteen is a mottled and torn ring of scarred rope marks and a single straight cut. Maybe he wouldn't even be surprised by the puckered puncture wound that Dazai has kept covered since he was sixteen. But that doesn't mean he needs to see it. Sometimes Dazai sees them like he did the tattoos that marked the skin of the Yakuza who came after them; his own self-inflicted form of irezumi decorating his skin, telling the story of his illustrious career in the Port Mafia one suicide attempt at a time. They're not a point of pride, the way the gang tattoos are though. Dazai hates them. He hides them from himself, as much as he hides them from anyone else. They're signs of his failures.

"It's never going to be enough, is it?" Chuuya's an angry man but a melancholy drunk, and he stares Dazai down with heavy eyes. "The promotion. The praise. That kid who follows you around. The bar and your friends there. The women you try and pick up…." Me. I'll never be enough. Chuuya doesn't say it, but Dazai can hear it clearly as Chuuya tears his gaze away and stares into his glass, then empties it into his gullet as if he can't taste it, as if it's water.

"You know, I was there too. All the shit that you're so hung up on." No, he wasn't, though. Not all of it. He didn't grow up next to Q, responsible for keeping his powers at bay. He never saw Elise, or the true nature or Mori's ability. Mori never…

But Dazai is still twelve years old and standing between Chuuya and that monster. He's not at risk any more, not that kind of risk, but he doesn't need to know. Chuuya is loyal to a fault and has a hair trigger temper. Dazai won't risk that.

"Hell, I have the larger kill count. Always will, you lazy jackass. Am I supposed to just…" Chuuya is alcohol-loose and careless as he drops the glass on the table, resting his hand instead on his gun.

"No." Dazai is fascinated by this, though he knows he should be horrified. "Not a gun. The only way to be sure then is a head shot, and it's too…"

"Messy." Chuuya finishes for Dazai, with a knowing smirk. "Vain bastard."

"Says the boy with the ridiculous hat."

Chuuya hums, watching Dazai as if he's a puzzle to figure out, bracing his elbow against the arm of the chair and his head in his hand as he stares. "Seppuku?"

"Tried it. Gut wounds hurt terribly." Mori doesn't 'waste' sedatives or anesthetics on Dazai. He either passes out from the pain, or he suffers it.

"You want to die, but you don't want it to hurt." Chuuya's voice is flat with disbelief, and Dazai answers by widening his unbandaged eye, hand pressed to his heart.

"I'm not a _masochist,_ Chibi."

"Yeah, well I might be." It's muttered, and Dazai's sure he wasn't supposed to hear it. Chuuya probably never would have said it sober. He understands, though, because Dazai is observant and Chuuya has never been hard to figure out. The one thing that can truly destroy Chuuya is the one thing he cannot let go of.

There's a reason the Mafia prefers orphans, that they encourage their members to sever ties, that they raise the children in their ranks as soldiers and killers. They're not supposed to get attached.

Chuuya was fascinated by Dazai at ten. Became protective of him at twelve. Adored him at fourteen. Fell in love with him at sixteen.

It is Chuuya's eighteenth birthday, passed in a pretentious hotel room full of empty liquor bottles and bloodied bedding and scattered weapons, and he has been gifted with the bitter understanding that abiding, unconditional love is no cure for anything.

"Go to sleep, you suicidal pain in my ass." Chuuya dismisses him bitterly, reaching for another bottle and cracking the plastic ring around it.

Dazai opens his mouth to speak, and Chuuya's flat stare is expectant, wounded, and unflinching. At twelve he could barely hold back from snapping at an apex predator, but now he can sit there waiting for Dazai to twist the knife because it is Dazai. He'd take a bullet for him, and has, but he won't protect himself from the monster Dazai knows that he is.

Chuuya's not a masochist. He's broken, just as thoroughly as Dazai.

For once in his life, Dazai closes his mouth again wordlessly, and Chuuya nods as if he expected no less. There's no comfort coming for him.

"Go the fuck to sleep. I'm making you walk on your own out of here tomorrow."

The only way to keep Chuuya safe is to keep Chuuya away from him. It is also the only way his death will not be considered Chuuya's failing.

They are eighteen. They are partners in every sense of the word, and know each other better than anyone else in the world could.

Within a week of this conversation, Dazai plays the fool and flashes grins and lazy idle flips of his hand as he strolls alongside Kouyou and her Golden Demon, and her look is painfully knowing and gratingly pitying as he suggests it would be in her own best interest for her to ask for her pupil to rejoin her side.

Chuuya knows what this is, though he's too proud to say it. He doesn't look at Dazai when he leaves, the straight-backed emotionless soldier they were raised to become, but his fists are clenched at his sides and his mouth set at a bitter, angry slant.

They were never really together. So Dazai never really breaks up with him. Chuuya was his partner, and now he is not.

Within a month, Akutagawa goes from idolizing from a distance to becoming Dazai's constant shadow in the field. Dazai's criticism is cutting, constant, mocking, and Akutagawa takes it with a seething determination instead of a smack in return.

Within two months, Chuuya and Dazai are bitter rivals who only see one another when the Executives gather, trading barbed words and threats. Chuuya was fine with being in Dazai's shadow as long as he was standing beside him to cast it. Now, though, he is quick to take down anyone to imply Dazai was the true talent of Double Black.

Away from Dazai's side, he cannot unleash the true extent of his ability, but he flourishes anyway with newfound ambition and pure spite.

Chuuya still says he'll be the one to kill Dazai someday. The meaning has changed. The answer has not. Maybe he will be. Chuuya will kill anyone who tries to take that honor from him.

Chuuya loves deeply and hates bitterly, and is fully capable of both at the same time. Though he'll never admit it, Dazai broke his heart. If anyone is allowed to carve Dazai's out after that, it's him.

Dazai knows for a fact there are worse ways to go.

 _I don't know if that's right or wrong_  
 _but such a feeling persists anyway_  
 _and sometimes irritates me_  
 _provoking outrageous desires_

 _once I believed_  
 _love poems were foolish_  
 _yet now I do nothing_  
 _but dream about love_  
\- Chuuya Nakahara


	2. between old stones

_I sing through:_  
 _falling backward_  
 _singing:_  
 _drying up_  
 _my heart_  
 _lies wrinkled:_  
 _tightrope walker_  
 _in between_  
 _old stones._

 _-_ Chuuya Nakahara

 ** _Four Years Ago_**

On the day Dazai disappears from the Port Mafia, Chuuya is the third person to know. Technically the fifth, but the two idiots who stood between a dead-eyed suicidal Dazai and his objectives can hardly be counted.

Akutagawa breaks it to him, and even over the phone it's impossible to miss his tone, the rage and despair of a man who is usually impossible to read. "Dazai is missing."

"Check the ditches then. Or the bottom of the fucking bay."

Chuuya hangs up on him without another word, crosses the room to his liquor cabinet, cracks the most expensive bottle of wine he has, and then promptly decides his newest mission is getting blindingly drunk.

He has been dreading that exact phone call for the last five years. In the past month or so, Dazai's fatalistic streak has been getting even worse, to the point where he's looked nearly sick with it. Not that Chuuya was paying attention for it, he just noticed. Noticed and picked at it, sniped at him, tried to get a rise out of his former partner. He got little in return, and now there will be no response coming.

He should feel something about this. Satisfaction that his most bitter rival in the organization is out of his way. Motivation or greed at the opening Dazai's departure leaves in the upper echelons of an organization he's been scratching and fighting his way to the top of since their partnership dissolved. Grief that his best friend apparently found the exit he's been searching years for.

Chuuya feels nothing.

Absolutely nothing at all.

Numb, he ignores the buzzing of his phone, swirls the Bordeaux in his glass, and watches blood red wine hypnotically tip and sway in the glass. An '89 Petrus, it is inarguably his single most expensive possession, a coveted treasure kept protected behind lock and key for years, for some unnamed, unknown, "someday."

It's a significant moment. It feels weighty, portentous, like there should be an audience to this. Like there is one, some invisible observer, seeing this for what it means.

This has been from the start a study in delayed gratification, the knowledge that he had something so precious in his reach but he wouldn't touch it. He's simultaneously owned and coveted it for so many years, always his but never really fully experienced. There was always the understanding that the moment he indulged himself, it would be used up, gone. All that's left a memory that words would never really convey. How do you explain something like that, to someone who will never know what it's like to _taste_.

You _can't_.

Chuuya's hand is shaking.

He tosses back the first glass like a shot, choking it down like ripping off a bandage. The flavor barely touches his tongue (rich, nuanced and layered) but catches in his throat, bitter. Chuuya stares at the empty glass after for a long moment, trying to think, to feel, to enjoy any of it, this once in a lifetime experience there and gone again. It still feels like eyes are on him, judging him, but the recognition that he's alone is bone-deep, because he _shouldn't_ have been for this.

Then the incessant vibration of his phone begins again.

"What?!" Chuuya snarls as he picks up, slamming the delicate wineglass down onto the table with a sharp clink of crystal cracking, a new flaw that streaks like lightning through the cut and polished facets from base to stem.

"Hello, Chuuya." It is not Akutagawa's voice that greets him now. There is a dangerous humor to Mori's voice at being greeted thus, and Chuuya freezes as the danger he's in abruptly registers. "I was curious if you would pick up for me."

"…Sir?" Chuuya drags the back of his hand across his mouth, slowly sitting up from where he's slumped into his armchair, and for a moment he entertains the notion that Dazai may not have had as much of a say in the manner of his own destruction as he believed. He's been getting more reckless without Chuuya around to reel him in, more brash. What did that idiot do? Because he knows, he _knows_ , that whatever this is, it's Dazai's fault and he's being dragged into one of his messes again. Was he taken out? Did some other group put a hit out on the youngest of the Executives? God help them if they did, because Dazai was a train wreck and an ass, but he was _theirs_.

Who could get the drop on Dazai…?

"Tell me, Chuuya. How much did Dazai offer you?"

"Offer...?" Chuuya is not stupid, no matter how much Dazai liked to taunt him for being an imbecile or simpleton in comparison… but he's missing a lot of information here and is on the spot, all while his instincts scream _danger, attack, fight_. Chuuya rises slowly to his feet, leaving the cracked wine glass on the table, and revisits that feeling of eyes on him, of an unseen audience. There is one now, he _knows_ , whether the fleeting feeling before was true or not. He shouldn't have ignored his instincts. "Whatever Dazai fell into, I wasn't part of it. I haven't worked for the bastard for nearly a year."

The stench of the pretentious cigarettes he favors precursors the arrival of Hirotsu by only moments, as he walks through the front door of Chuuya's apartment that he knew was deadbolted and locked an hour ago. As one of the Port Mafia's most experienced combatants, Chuuya has a fairly amicable relationship with the Black Lizard and its leader, one brute force to another, but today he watches Hirotsu flatly as he waits for Mori to tell him why they're there, who they're going to hit, aware of Gin seeming to melt from the shadows as she joins them, Tachihara perching on the railing of his landing, and that sense of _more_ closing in.

"A year apart isn't _so_ long in the scheme of things, is it Chuuya? Not when it's someone you've loved for half your life." It's only because of his audience that Chuuya doesn't recoil as if punched, but still the breath hisses out of him angrily, heart racing. When they know your weaknesses, they _own_ you. In an instant, a lifetime of carelessness races through his mind-trailing in Dazai's wake like a protective puppy through childhood, trips in their teen years that lingered too long for sightseeing on Dazai's whim, the periodic hotel rooms with one bed, the vicious fights that ended in biting kisses, and how Chuuya's eyes never wandered even when Dazai's did. God they'd been idiots. The sickening realization that it's all over now hits just before he realizes Mori's applying pressure on his weak spot, and Chuuya doesn't know _why_. "So when my youngest Executive disappears in the night, killing two of my men and destroying every shred of information and evidence we have on him, and about you in the process…"

Disappears.

"…I have to ask myself, if the infamous Double Black is intending to do something incredibly stupid, or did Dazai finally leave his sidekick behind."

 _Disappears._

The numbness flash-burns away in a rage that leaves the crystal wine glass crushed to powder on the table and thousands of dollars worth of rare vintage wine suddenly without a bottle as it smashes downwards, spilling over the table like a fountain of blood, shards flying.

"I thought the call was that he'd finally managed to kill himself, you're telling me he _ran_?"

He thought Dazai was _dead_. Some not-insignificant part of him _blamed_ himself for it, for the fact that he's never been able to give Dazai enough of a reason to live, and he feels sick and furious with that. He can almost picture Dazai's stupid smug face-another 'gotcha' moment where he could point out how much time Chuuya invested into that pursuit, another twisted knife disguised as a jape, taking pleasure in reminding Chuuya how little he gives a shit and how stupid Chuuya was to think he ever did. That stupid arrogant _selfish_ worthless son of a bitch. Chuuya knew all of that about him, always has, but Dazai a _coward?_ A _traitor?_

"I'll _kill_ him."

Mori _laughs_ , and it's great that he's the source of everyone's fucking entertainment today. The table splinters, collapsed under the pull of its own weight as the wood floors beneath them creak threateningly and the chair legs buckle, and Chuuya raises his eyes to glare at the Black Lizard. They're waiting to see if they're meant to attack or accompany him, and he's spoiling for a fight right now. The problem is, he lashes out and it's going to be taken the wrong way. There's only one person who he needs to take this out on.

"Call off the dogs before I hurt them." He stares at them as he says it, trying for cool and collected and ending up somewhere far left of that, a rumbling growl. It's not a threat. He's not stupid enough to threaten the head of the Port Mafia when he's expecting a turf war and thinks Chuuya's going to be Dazai's stupid little lap dog like he always has been. He's clinging to his self control, fighting off the darkening haze of his rage, the giggling hateful madness that lurks on the edge of his awareness at times like this, whispering into the corners of his mind the words that will set it all free. He hasn't let loose with the corruption of his abilities since Dazai sent him away, and with his emotions this close to the surface if he lets go everything in the block is going to be rubble. "If he took me out of the files it was to cover his own ass, not any fucking favor to me. How much of a head start does he have?"

Mori hums thoughtfully, and in that moment Chuuya's life hangs in the balance.

"Hours. He's stolen information valuable to the organization and disappeared, but he hasn't left the city. He won't try to leave the city." Whether Mori knows that for certain, or how he deduced it, is irrelevant. Dazai used to do the same thing-Chuuya is used to working that way. "If you capture him, you'll be rewarded. Kill him, if you have to. Prove your loyalty, Chuuya-we have a recent job opening."

The line disconnects, and moments later the Black Lizard leaders and their lackies move aside, Hirotsu's breath curling in a line of smoke, him watching Chuuya with wary appraisal as he hangs up his own phone. "We're to follow your commands for the search, Executive. Where would he go to ground?"

Executive.

Chuuya bares his teeth in something too sharp to be a smile, or even the twisted facsimile of Dazai's mirth. Yes, it's a payoff, the title nearly a bribe to keep Chuuya on the right side of this conflict. Some day, he may take more pleasure in it. Today, it feels like Dazai's hand-me-downs. It's _supposed_ to be grating. Chuuya knows he's being played, knows Mori is capitalizing on the rage and betrayal that Chuuya's feeling, but it's so much easier to hate than to feel gutted. Chuuya may be every bit the idiot Dazai's played him for, but at least he's not _disloyal_. "Check Lupin, the shitty little basement bar, and there's a curry place that he's been all stupid about recently. Boss says he won't leave town, but he's a nostalgic son of a bitch, so he'll be somewhere he knows waiting for the chaos to die down before he moves out."

It's a half-truth, but will get them out of his way before he crushes all of them. Dazai won't be in either of those places, but it's true he'll be somewhere he knows. He hides in plain sight, barely making it seem like hiding at all. He may have turned coward and run, but he's still a pride-driven idiot in his way, and Chuuya _knows him_. Dazai's made a study of everything, of figuring out everyone's motives and moves, but Chuuya's singular focus for the past decade has been trying to understand that moron.

He probably returned right back to his nest, past any traps or guards. Probably packing leisurely. Because god forbid he leave anything actually _important_ to him behind.

The framed art on the walls slams upwards, smashing into the ceiling, before tumbling back towards the floor. He's losing control, gravity around him fluctuating in direction and strength as he stalks towards his coat rack, and he doesn't even fucking care about his possessions because now _everything_ in this shitty apartment reminds him of Dazai and it _hurts_. Dazai perched on his chair with his nose in Chuuya's journal when he came out of a shower, smirk on his lips and an insult on his tongue. Dazai raiding his pantry for meals at all hours of the day because god forbid he learn how to take care of himself. Dazai yanking the pillow out from underneath Chuuya's head at three o'clock in the morning and flopping on his mattress with a whine about his subordinates like they were gossiping schoolgirls at a sleepover and he hadn't just shown back up smelling like gunpowder and kerosene after weeks away to train the newer recruits. Dazai pressing him back against the door just weeks ago, biting kisses and hissed insults between them, and even seething with resentment Chuuya has never been able to resist. Insult to injury, in retrospect. Dazai made sure he took advantage of one last time to yank Chuuya around before abandoning him forever with that stupid dead eyed smile and a quip.

Snapping his head to side, Chuuya narrows his eyes, focuses his gaze, and his hat falls from the counter across the room and into his hand. "What do you want, old man."

Orders given, the rank and file of Black Lizard has scattered, and god help them if they're around when Chuuya finds Dazai. But Hirotsu is lingering on the creaking steps up to Chuuya's apartment, watching Chuuya from behind his stupid monocle. At being addressed, he takes an unimpressed drag of his cigarette. "He's going to try to use you."

Whether he means Mori or Dazai, it doesn't matter. The answer is the same, and Chuuya bites it out as he tugs his gloves on, fisting his hands to flex them. "Everyone uses everyone. It's how the fucking game is played. Either get used to it, or get strong enough to become the one doing the using."

It's the only way to win

Chuuya stalks out past him, and the well of gravity around him is staggering, a weight that presses even Hirotsu to his knees. He slams his apartment door after himself without a touch with a shift of direction, of focus, hard enough to crack the frame, and shoves past the man who Mori sent to try and kill him if he stepped out of line. Like he could. Chuuya is a force of nature, one barely held back by a thin shell of human form and stubborn will, and his control is slipping. He just needs a small push.

The odd click as Chuuya wrenches his key in the ignition is the only warning he has before the explosion, and that first spark is the crack in the tenuous grip he has on his sanity and his rage as the sinister whisper in his mind roars with his voice. The explosion that rips the car apart around him, a fireball of destruction, is nothing to the concussive force of Chuuya Nakahara slamming his power outwards, tearing through metal like tissue paper as he launches upwards.

 _Everything is black and grey and red, red everywhere, red blood red fire red power crackling from his fingertips, red searing across his skin. It hurts him and the hurt amplifies the frenzy, heart racing. When he snarlingly launches himself at the fireball beneath him as if it's a physical enemy he can tear apart, the red is a vortex, black leeching it away. Energy matter light life he can consume kill destroy it all._

 _The crater is a smoking pit, an old man in his red red red shirt blood staining everything moves groggily and catches his attention, and he snarls and launches himself back out of the crater to level ground, screaming sirens car alarms people chaos pain death die die_ _ **die**_ _. There's physical pain but he doesn't care, doesn't need the body holding him back, if it rips apart it won't matter meatsack trap_ _ **cage**_ _._

Black.

The hand pressed over Chuuya's eyes is cool and dry, the jut of a chin resting on the crown of his head and body at his back hold him in place effortlessly, and when Chuuya's shattered leg buckles without his power to keep him weightlessly upright, the arm locked around broken ribs is a familiar source of pain and comfort.

"Sleep, Chuuya, you idiot."

He will convince himself it was a wishful fantasy later, when he regains consciousness briefly as Akutagawa's ability cocoons him, lifting him out of the pit of his own making. He exploded, and was knocked out by the force, that's all. The best chance the Port Mafia had of predicting their wayward Executive was sidelined immediately by a failed hit.

Mori's suspicion fades slightly after that. Chuuya won't believe it was Dazai (doesn't _want_ to believe it), but it's proof enough to the Boss that they're not colluding together against him.

The phantom memory of lips grazing his temple will linger in Chuuya's rage-filled nightmares and drunken stupors for the next two years.

 _Victims. Victims of a transitional period of morality._  
 _That is what we both certainly are._  
\- Osamu Dazai

A berserker is both the easiest and hardest individual to predict. Once you know their flaws, exploiting them is simple. You know their reaction will be rage. How they'll explode, that's harder to guess at-there's no rational thinking left to anticipate for, you have to lay the groundwork beforehand and hope their rampage is aimed in the right direction. When he's in his right mind, Chuuya is willful and cunning and passionate... but that passion has a clear and easily exploitable breaking point.

Mori is a tactician. From the start, he had an objective with pairing Dazai with Chuuya, though Dazai didn't clue in until years later. Until Double Black. Until he was being groomed to be an Executive. Chuuya was too powerful and too volatile, and so Dazai was paired with him as his handler and his trainer and the leash around his neck all at once. Mori would keep the boy useful and obedient, or he would see him locked away like their other weapons, like Q, waiting until the reward was worth the risk of unleashing a loose cannon. From that perspective, the boys' attachment to each other worked in Mori's favor perfectly for years. Until it didn't.

With how Chuuya feels about him, the only possible outcomes of Dazai's desertion were determination and loyalty or rage and resentment, and either would send Chuuya on a straight line trajectory towards Dazai. Mori shoved at just the right moment, in just the right way, to be sure Chuuya would be of use to him. Either he would go right to Dazai and kill him, or he would go right to Dazai and reveal him. If that chess piece destroyed itself in the process, ripped apart without a handler to manage him? Then he was no use to Mori anyway. If he survived, though, or better yet cleared the board of Dazai, he was invaluable.

So Dazai headed him off at the pass. He needed the right catalyst to force Chuuya to burn out his rage and his ability early, and then to be there just long enough to keep it from destroying Chuuya's body in the process; he needed to not be spotted, so that Mori wouldn't hold Chuuya accountable for Dazai's desertion. Dazai understands his partner's ability well enough to know he would survive an explosion, as long as Dazai was there to keep him from burning himself out after.

There are three people in this world who understand the true nature of Corruption, and unfortunately Chuuya is not one of them. It took long enough for Dazai to fully understand it himself. The dissociative split between Chuuya and the 'Corruption,' the full extent of his ability, began as the purely self-protective defense of a traumatized young child, and put in a traumatizing enough situation it would trigger his natural defenses. It was Mori who eventually introduced the idea of a trigger phrase to induce the dissociative break, and then twisted the fear and pain that broke Chuuya's conscious mind so that everything looked like a threat in that state, fashioning him into a better weapon all the while posing it as training at higher and higher levels. After all, Mori is the same man who saw that one child could only hurt people who hurt him and taught him to tape razor blades to himself so that the entire world caused him pain.

They are all subject to Mori's manipulations. Dazai. Oda. Chuuya. But in this… it was Chuuya who decided to hate, Chuuya who immediately saw malice in Dazai's actions, Chuuya who took Mori's explanations at face value, Chuuya who made the choice to stay a puppet dancing to Mori's tune. Chuuya belongs to the Port Mafia completely. He can't even conceive of another way.

No matter what Chuuya's chosen now, there is too much history between them for Dazai to let it end so quickly. He has no intention of watching another friend die, and he still can subdue the meltdown of Chuuya's ability at a touch. Unfortunately, he's not in the right position to do anything about the state of Chuuya's mind.

The spiral of grief and rage is as predictable as anything. Even once he recovers, Chuuya never returns back to his slum apartment after the explosion; he's never liked to deal with aftermath, and with his promotion and Dazai's abandonment, there is no reason to look back. The apartment smells like smoke and wine turned vinegar, living room wrecked, front steps ripped away and door set heavy, wedged and stuck in its warped frame. The apartment itself is a mausoleum to a relationship gone sour, full of things chosen alongside Dazai; a pantry full of food to Dazai's tastes, souvenirs both of them collected over a lifetime, books Dazai liked to page through, the bed they often shared.

Dazai lives there in the wreckage of their friendship for two weeks as the Port Mafia scours the city looking for him, and then he calls in a favor. Two years, and he can come out of the shadows. Two years, and he will take a position that lets him help save people's lives.

But he started with Chuuya's life.

 _He did, he said so long and then_  
 _he walked away, he walked out from that door,_  
 _the weird smile that he wore, shiny like brass,_  
 _his smile that didn't look like someone living._

 _-Chuuya Nakahara_


	3. sorrow already spoiled

_sorrow already spoiled_  
 _never hopes nor wishes anything_  
 _sorrow already spoiled_  
 _in languor dreams of death_  
\- Chuuya Nakahara

 ** _Three Years Ago_**

Chuuya's head is killing him, the searing, stabbing sort of migraine that tells him either he cut loose with his ability last night and destroyed something, or he dove into a vat of whiskey and tried to drink his way to the bottom. In the first moment between sleep and waking he can't even remember, and on any given day either is a possibility. The surface beneath him is hard, so he's probably just passed out on the floor again. Wouldn't be the first time.

Fingers comb through his hair as if petting a cat, and pain and discomfort he's used to but the comforting touch is unsettlingly foreign. It jolts him awake, flinging himself upright and away from whoever he's woken up near, ignoring the sickening lurch of his stomach at moving so quickly and the sudden pain jolting through his hip as he hits the ground, hands raised to strike out with his ability.

Heedless of the danger posed by the man who just tumbled to the ground at her feet, Kouyou placidly tucks the ribbon in between the pages of her book to mark her spot, lowers her tea to the bench beside her, and then turns her eyes at last on Chuuya as he breathes raggedly on the slatted wooden floor of Kouyou's small teahouse, heart racing at the surprise, hands lowering once he recognizes where he is.

Judging by the daylight around them, it's mid-morning or early afternoon, long after Chuuya would have normally rolled out of bed to start his day. He's across the city from his apartment, still dressed in yesterday's suit, and was apparently unconscious in Kouyou's garden.

"...Shit. What happened?"

Kouyou raises an eyebrow at his language, and at the guilty scrub of Chuuya's hand through his tangled hair as he tries to orient himself. "You've been reckless, little brother."

"What else is new?" Chuuya grumbles, getting his legs back beneath him and pushing himself to his feet carefully, and his knees feel like rubber. The whiskey, then. He smells like it, sweating alcohol out into his rumpled suit, and his mouth tastes like chalk and bile, his head aches, and his legs are unsteady beneath him. Definitely the whiskey, and he feels like _shit_. Corruption has give him a high tolerance for aches-nothing like the flip side of your power trying to liquefy your brain and overextend the limits of a human body-but he feels like he was beaten by a baseball bat (another personal experience to compare to). Kouyou pointedly looks to the bench across from her, and Chuuya lowers himself back to sitting, leaning back against the wall and letting her scrutinize him, face blank, blue eyes locked with burgundy. He's not nine years old and he doesn't answer to her anymore, but he owes her his respect and gratitude well enough to listen even when he already knows what she's going to say.

"You are an executive of the Port Mafia." Oh, he knows. "One of the most feared and respected men in all of Japan." Feared, yes. "And if you are seen drinking yourself into a stupor in bars you damage the reputation of our entire organization."

Ah, now _that_ she got wrong. He does have _some_ concept of the responsibility of his position, and he's got a work ethic, crashing in another executive's garden aside. He flashes her he sort of smirk he knows infuriates everyone around him. "That won't happen. I only drink alone."

If anything she looks annoyed. Yeah, he didn't think that reassurance would get him off the hook for one of Kouyou's concerned and threatening homilies. He knows exactly how this looks, because it looks exactly like what it is.

His apartment is more expensive than he ever could have afforded before he became an Executive, but his tastes in alcohol have become cheaper than ever. He's still a collector and connoisseur of expensive wines, and when in public that's all he will indulge in… but he's a mass consumer of plastic-bottled whiskey in private, and the evidence of it is on the floor of his bedroom and kitchen.

It's swill, but he's done fooling himself that he's after the taste. Why waste a fine vintage if you're probably just going to be hacking it up the next morning. It's not that he enjoys being drunk, either-he's just… tired.

When Chuuya was a kid, Kouyou seemed so grown up and mature, a young woman with eyes far older than her years, confident in her position and her power. She was composed and straight backed without being cruel or cold. She liked children, and took to mentoring with a surprising level of compassion considering their lives and the fact that her lessons were about how to effectively eliminate an enemy and obliterate a target. She taught him the value of looking the part of a boss even when you're still a grunt, drilled into him how to command attention and respect, and demonstrated how to stare someone she hated in the eye and follow his orders while awaiting his downfall. She taught him to embrace the nature of his gift, and how to become the killer nature intended him to be. Her patience never rubbed off on him, but her lessons kept him alive when the former boss shoved him into the field, and helped him claw up the ladder to her level under Mori.

It's only recently that he grasped that she was younger than he is now when he fell into her care-a teenager herself still. He still doesn't know how she managed it-god knows there are days he's ready to strangle Akutagawa, and he's only working with the kid not raising him-but they ultimately grew up raising each other, siblings in everything but blood.

He respects her but he doesn't fear her, and the same holds true in return. She's a beautiful monster, and in her care he became the same. They are family, they're both fully aware that they're more than a little screwed up in the head, and that the Port Mafia is the only place they could thrive.

Now Kouyou's stare is knowing, her eyes fathomless as she scrutinizes him from beneath the fringe of her scarlet dyed hair as if she can read every one of his flaws. It's a long list. She could be at that all day.

Bracing his hands on his knees, Chuuya hefts himself off of the bench again and offers her a bow. They both have jobs to get to, no matter how shitty he feels, and he needs to find his way home and peel this suit off of him, and maybe burn it. He has a closet full of identical suits, it won't be missed. "Sorry I showed up this way, but I should go. I'm probably late to kick the crap out of someone for not paying their 'security deposit.'"

He's partway turned away from her when she speaks up, voice deceptively soft for the sharpness of her words. "You can't do this, Chuuya. We're not built for it."

Chuuya snags his hat and coat up from where she folded it neatly, a cutting tilt to his lips, bloodshot blue eyes empty as he glances her way. "All due respect, Kou, but I think that's between me and my liver. And as long as I can still do my job, still hold a knife, and still use my ability, I don't see where my drinking habits are any business of the organization."

"Your relationship with the traitor is _."_

Chuuya halts, the stiffening of his spine and tense set of his shoulders immediately defensive. He _knows_ better than to show weakness to any of them, but that is a bruise that is never allowed to heal. Every other one of the Executives knows who is meant to be sitting in his chair. Anyone who's been in the organization longer than a few years knows he is more accustomed to taking orders than giving them. And Mori, Mori watches him like he's an ant under a magnifying glass, waiting to see if he'll burn under the focused light.

Dazai can ditch him all he wants, but Chuuya… he's stuck with the ghost of that jackass haunting him.

"There's no _relationship,_ and this has nothing to do with _..._ Not every damn thing I do is about _him!"_

Even now, years later with them both adults, he still has to look up to Kouyou when she steps in close, and he grits his teeth and narrows his eyes when she takes his hand in hers, ignoring his outburst.

"We aren't meant for this, Chuuya. Love, hope, they're a poison. I learned it, and you are as well. Dazai left…"

"And good fucking riddance." Kouyou squeezes Chuuya's hand in hers tightly, and he bites his words off angrily as she continues.

"...And if he is captured you will be expected to execute him as a message to our enemies and proof of your loyalty. You know our code, and you know our way." Kouyou's eyes are sharp, a warning, the grip on his hand bruising. "Are you prepared to make Dazai bite the curb?"

Chuuya scowls, and it's all the answer she needs. He can fight Dazai. Hell he could kill Dazai in the field: Dazai's ability or not, he's the better fighter, and he doesn't need to touch or directly engage Dazai to rip a building down on top of him, or fling a knife at his heart, though with Dazai's brain and his instincts, it wouldn't be so straightforward. A fight is one thing.

Coldly putting three rounds in him and then smashing his face open against the stair… that's a different matter entirely, and the scenario has a starring role in some of his worst nightmares.

Kouyou nods as she reads the truth of it from his face, and with a shift of her hand Chuuya can feel a crinkle of paper tucked between his palms as she steps away from him. "As I thought. You need to consider what there is between you and end it, Chuuya. I will not let him destroy you alongside him. Next time, I will not wait to step into my garden to find the intruder."

Kouyou slips out past him, all silken grace and soft movement, and Chuuya stares after her, clutching the paper she passed him in his fingers.

 _Big Sister- Picked up this stray dog foaming at the mouth on his kitchen floor, and I think he belongs to you. Tell him from an expert that alcohol poisoning is a shitty way to commit suicide._

There's no signature. No initials. No need for it.

A year ago this week, Dazai abandoned his life, his home, his future, and his best friend. He may as well have died, and Chuuya barely had time to grieve before everything went to shit. That night, the betrayal had been too new and the comprehension that he was _alive_ too tainted by rage that he _left_ for anything else to sink in. By the time Chuuya was back on his feet, Dazai was an _enemy_ , not a rival; an objective.

He's holding in his hands evidence that Dazai _is_ alive, evidence past just Mori's taunting words. It's also proof that he isn't entirely _gone_ , and Chuuya has no idea what to do with that. The relief he probably should have felt a year ago is just sinking in. Dazai's _alive_ , the stupid son of a bitch. He lived through the first year of his former family hunting him like a dog, without ever breaking cover, but just showed his ass to two different executives so he could snipe at Chuuya and try to subject him to a scolding.

He doesn't know what to feel about that. Chuuya knows what he _should_ do, what he's _supposed_ to do. He should report this, let the boss figure it out and give him orders.

If he doesn't, what does that mean?

Chuuya's a man of action and impulse. Dazai was the one who'd sit around and try to think three steps ahead of an enemy before he took the first step. Chuuya's standing in Kouyou's garden, aware that she's waiting to see what he'll do, and he's sick of being _watched_.

Striding out of the teahouse, Chuuya throws his coat around his shoulders, takes three running steps, and leaps over the high concertina wire topped wall surrounding Kouyou's property. He won't even ask how Dazai dragged him, drunk and unconscious, into this place. He spent years wiping out after battle and being carried out wrapped in his coat, waking up just like that-coat folded and hat next to him-wherever the hell Dazai put him. He could have woken up on a shuttle to the moon and he wouldn't even have been surprised, just annoyed.

Dazai's _alive_ , and he's _himself_ and he's somewhere nearby smug and self righteous at Chuuya's expense, and he really wants to punch him in his stupid face right now and then strangle him with his ridiculous bandages, after he sees for himself that he's still breathing. So first, he's going to have to prove he wasn't just the muscle in their arrangement by working out the timeline.

Chuuya had a packed day yesterday. Territory dispute, collections, someone skimming off the top to deal with, expectations to enforce, some tough love combat training to dole out. On the anniversary of Dazai's disappearance, he was a whirlwind of activity, but took the time to stop over in the middle of that to get supplies for what was otherwise guaranteed to be a sleepless night.

Dazai wouldn't have followed him into alleys and basements, not and risk being seen. So that leaves the store.

Chuuya goes there on his way to the apartment, shoes ringing too-loud on tile and coat and hat barely concealing his disheveled state. He makes it work for him, offering a menacing smirk to the store owner who sold to him the evening before, the brim of his hat shadowing his eyes and face above his pointed chin, collar popped without his tie around it, waistcoat unbuttoned and sleeves rolled up.

"Tall. Brown hair. Bandages around his…."

The man is babbling before Chuuya can even threaten him properly. Typical.

"I didn't know he'd rough you up! The way he talked, I thought he was your…" Chuuya tips his chin up to show his face better, raises an eyebrow and bares his teeth in a threatening grin, daring him to finish those words. "I… H-he said he was worried about your drinking problem and asked me to call him when you bought more than two bottles of hard liquor in a trip."

"When was this?" Chuuya is drawling his words now, eyes bloodshot and deep set, hair untamed and licking around his face like fire, hands tucked in the pockets of his slacks. His coat is light around his shoulders, buoyant, and he crackles with power. Chuuya knows the picture he makes when he's 'on,' versus how people perceive him when he's flying under the radar. He's never going to be able to shop here again without the guy pissing himself.

"I… it. Three months ago, maybe?"

Months. Dazai's been spying on him for _months. "_ I want the name and phone number he gave you."

It's not a request.

By the time Chuuya walks out, he's armed with Dazai's pseudonym, phone number, and a 2003 Cuvée Cathelin-not the best vintage, but the best he could snag in payment there. Dazai had scrawled a brief description of him on the back of a receipt for the shopkeeper as a reminder of who he was: "Red hair, blue eyes, short, stupid hat, angry." That note, like the message to Kouyou, is now burning a hole in his pocket. He's sure if he visited the other three liquor stores within an easy distance from his apartment, he'd find they'd been paid off and given the same general directions. He'll do a sweep later and pick up Dazai's evidence. First, he needs out of this suit, and to decide what to do with the information he's now armed with.

He shouldn't really be surprised to walk into a ransacked apartment.

Dazai didn't touch the detritus littering the floor, but the whiskey bottles he had left are now empty and lined up by the sink, contents dumped down the drain. His collection of fine wines is missing-and Dazai doesn't even appreciate wine enough for that to be anything but outright spite. His television and tablet are missing, and there are holes of missing books on his shelves. Dazai even left his work laptop where it sat as if to mockingly point out that this is personal and not professional. Dazai feels no need to dig into what the Port Mafia is up to without him.

Basically, Dazai's just a _dick_.

Tossing his keys down by his abandoned collar and bolo tie, Chuuya sets his hat on the counter, grabs the one remaining half-eaten box of takeout Dazai left him in the fridge, snags his phone, drops down on his couch, and sends his ire into the void.

 _You're a fucking asshole, "Oba Yozo."_

He doesn't let himself stare at his phone as he waits, pouring himself a glass of the wine and then digging chopsticks into his noodles as he regards the empty section of wall where his television once hung. When the phone buzzes, he's braced for nearly anything except _Dazai_.

 **That took you too long. You're slower than I remember. Shorter, too. Did you shrink, Chibi?**

No one else in the entire damn world would know Dazai's stupid childhood nickname for him, let alone sling it at an Executive in the Port Mafia like that. It was only ever in private, away from the bosses they had to impress and mafia they needed to fear him, and he grumbled and hissed about it even when he was ten. This is a call and reply, confirmation of the identity, and now it's so _real_.

 _If I ever see your face again, I'm breaking your jaw first._

 **Can you even reach that high?**

 _Bite me, you fucking giraffe. I didn't need your intervention._

 **You're welcome for the timely rescue. I promise, it was a one time deal. I just couldn't let "asphyxiated on vomit" be your obituary after everything we've lived through. Good lecture?**

It's _Dazai_ , tugging at his ponytail like he always has to irritate him, as if the past two damn years haven't happened. It's irritating as hell how he can do that, just selectively remember the parts of their shared history that he wants to-throwing every damn disagreement and weakness in his face when they're at odds, or teasing him with the few _good_ stolen moments they'd gotten together, and the way they were perfectly in sync until they suddenly weren't.

But Dazai paid off unwitting spies, broke into his house, scooped his drunken unconscious self off the floor, and dumped him at the house of one of the people ready to kill him in an attempt to… what, shame Chuuya into sobriety? It's the kind of stupid, ridiculous plan that only Dazai could pull off.

 _If you try this again, she'll kill you before I ever get the chance._

 **You know she's threatened to kill me almost as many times as you have. It's cute that you're worried about it now.**

No, he didn't actually know that. But he can't exactly feign surprise. Kouyou is protective, and when Chuuya was given over to her care almost immediately after the mafia killed the man she loved and forced her to return, protecting him became almost an obsession. Dazai was exactly the kind of threat she feared most. The kind stupidly stumbled into because of misplaced affection.

The entire criminal underworld and the special police all would like to get their hands on Dazai, and he's focusing on being a nuisance to Chuuya. This is why he's dangerous. Dazai lacks all common sense, and around him Chuuya drops his guard.

 _Shut up. I want my goddamn tv back. You don't even WATCH tv._

 **I might watch. Or I can sell it. Consider it payment for holding that mop you call your hair back while you were sick.**

If Dazai can pretend this is normal, then for just this moment Chuuya can let himself believe it too. It's like they're seventeen again, all but living together in Chuuya's apartment, Dazai being a pest and Chuuya taking lazy swipes at him in return. It's only now that he realizes how much he _missed_ that, how their stupid squabbles were probably the only thing keeping them going at times.

 _Go to hell, you stilt legged jackass stalker._

 **I would, but I can't go anywhere at the moment. There is a beautiful college girl here who keeps looking my way. Gorgeous hands, she looks very strong. I wonder how she feels about double suicide?**

Chuuya grimaces, and sets his wine aside as he considers the text. This he didn't miss. Dazai twists the knife so casually, too, as if his stupid suicide obsession didn't factor into their falling out. As if it's absolutely normal that he fantasizes about dying.

Chuuya's spent a year now under orders to kill Dazai on sight, and he's prepared to try, but the man's death wish still frustrates him. What the hell was the point of him running away if it wasn't to make his life more bearable?

 _If you kill yourself before I get the chance, I'll fucking haunt your sorry ass._

 **You'd follow after? I didn't realize you were so romantic!**

 **But I have it on good authority that any day now, a terrifying pocket sized mobster is supposed to show up at my door and crush me. It's very scary. I am trembling in fear right now. He doesn't seem to be very good at his job, though.**

Shit. Of course Dazai saw the pause before Chuuya's response and read something from it. Of course he has to ruin this all by reminding Chuuya that they're on a collision course now that will only end when Chuuya kills him, or Dazai does it himself.

And of course the asshole has to point out that Chuuya clearly hasn't been trying his hardest to make that happen sooner rather than later.

Chuuya taps out an irritated response as he scowls, mood slipping. This _isn't_ _his fault_. He never asked for this shit, they were supposed to be partners. Some day, Dazai could have stepped up to replace Mori, because he hated the Boss so much, and Chuuya would have been there to watch his back. Their entire future, their friendship, their plans, and he threw them all away and then Chuuya along with it.

 _I'm great at the damn job. The one YOU dumped on me._

 **The job is repetitive and boring. You had more fun sniping at me in the past five minutes than you've had in a year of pretending to be me, admit it.**

Smug son of a bitch. Chuuya really could kill him right now. His retort can't even be a denial, because the single most infuriating thing about talking to Dazai is how easily he sees through everyone. _Especially_ Chuuya.

 _Go fuck yourself._

 **Can't, not flexible enough. Maybe my new friend will. Wish me luck?**

Now he's just trying to make Chuuya jealous. It's not going to work. Chuuya's never been possessive, not in that way. If those women knew half of what Chuuya knows about Dazai, they'd run screaming. So in that way, Dazai will never really be theirs. Still, Dazai is trying to get a rise from him, knows how he felt (feels?), and has to take a jab at him. Their insults and taunts are a language of their own now.

 _I hate you, asshole._

 **I know. I feel the same. Until next time!**

Chuuya jabs the call button before he can second guess himself, holding his breath as the line rings twice before switching to a message that the voicemail box hasn't been set up.

He didn't expect any less, but he waits through the disconnect anyway, and he feels… he doesn't know what he feels. The resentment is still there, the deep ache of abandonment and frustration and anger he's felt for two years. And god, yes, he hates Dazai for this still.

But he's _alive,_ and some part of this fucked up _thing_ they've always had between them is still there. Chuuya is still hung up on the bastard, and it's infuriating because he _knows_ that he shouldn't be, and he _knows_ that Dazai exploits how he feels to twist him around. Dazai doesn't feel the same. Dazai never could have left if he did.

It's that knowledge that gets Chuuya back on track, steeling his resolve.

He finishes the glass of wine, first, corking the bottle and tucking it away for now (bit too young, bit too tart, it needed time to mellow out but it's all he has currently anyway), and dumps the rest of his food uneaten into the trash. Then he unbuttons his shirt, tosses his suit in the laundry to figure out later, and throws himself into a steaming hot shower to rid himself of the stench of whiskey. By the time he's dressed and shaved and presentable for work, the phone number has been disconnected. He expected no less. As repayment for whatever state Chuuya was in last night, he's given Dazai an hour's head start. That's all he can spare without raising suspicion, especially if Kouyou has told the others about Dazai being sighted.

There's a moment of hesitation before tightening the collar around his neck again and then tucking his knife into the small of his back, but he's been wearing both so long now that they're part of him. Chuuya glances in the mirror, tilts his hat down over his eyes, and steps back out of the door of his apartment and into the chase, starting with bullying a few shopkeepers into giving up their security tapes, and then finally canvassing the college bars Dazai could have been at.

Dazai's burner phone sits in a dumpster behind a trendy bar in easy walking distance from Chuuya's, and he casually crushes it to powder with his ability to hide whatever evidence of their conversation Mori's people could pull off it, before stepping in to try and charm whatever girl Dazai likely traumatized.

It's a game of cat and mouse, now, and though he isn't sure he wants to win, he isn't free from the need to hunt. If anyone can make it interesting, it will be Dazai.

 _& the boy who sang_  
 _& wore a round hat_  
 _fell into a broken sleep_  
 _& came out of his grave_  
 _& sat with us_  
 _& sang in a broken sleep_  
-Chuuya Nakahara

 ** _Two Years Ago_**

A storm is brewing outside, the air thick with it, the ripe smell and electricity of the air threatening nature's violence, but Chuuya's mind is wandering again. He can't help it, he's fucking bored.

Today, he's letting the kids take the wheel and playing the silent presence in the corner, blissfully anonymous to the low level street scum that ebb and flow around the Port Mafia without ever really being an integral part of it. They're bottom feeders, petty thieves, ex cons, pimps, drug dealers, gangbangers-they all pay their part in to be able to operate in the Mafia's city, but they wouldn't know an Executive unless he crushed them where they stood. It's good, though. Chuuya's used to being overlooked, and uses it to his advantage.

Dazai would make a short joke there, the fuck. He used to do this-hell, he's probably where Chuuya learned this skill, wandering around every dive bar and back alley meeting, absent minded and disinterested until something caught his attention, then he'd pull from all the information he'd supposedly ignored to jump to the right conclusions, or make the right judgement calls.

Chuuya has to make people repeat themselves. But usually, that works to his advantage. It shakes loose new details, and off-foots them to the point of being flustered.

Take now. He's been making the rounds all evening listening to criminals gripe about other criminals, and it's finally nearing the end of his night now as closing time rolls around at the dockyard bars, last call an hour ago. The high winds are rattling windows that are stained black with smoke or paint, obscuring everything inside from prying eyes. The bar they're in doesn't have a theme so much as a vast array of random junk mounted to the walls, magpie-like in its randomness, a thin patina of grime and dust on the decor and the highest shelves.

The high shelves are lined with the priciest liquor, 'top shelf' in fact as well as name, and in a dive bar like this where everyone is looking to get drunk quickly and cheaply, every single bottle save one is fuzzy with dust. And it's that bottle that's caught Chuuya's eye as he lounges near the door, listening with only half an ear to a complaint of the bar owner being harassed by some lippy detectives, after paying the Port Mafia protection money to help bribe the local police into looking the other way about his fencing operation for illegal imports.

There is a bottle of 1945 Château Mouton-Rothschild sitting on that shelf, a precious vintage indeed, and _entirely_ out of place in this bar. Chuuya mentally catalogs the liquor of nearly every room he enters, and he's been fixed on it since he arrived. The glass is polished and clean, the carpet of grime and dust around it disturbed by its placement, the label pristine and featuring individualized artwork commissioned by Baron Rothschild to celebrate the end of the war. It's one of the best vintages to come out of the 20th century, and it has absolutely no place in a dockside bar in Yokohama. Where it belongs is in Chuuya's personal collection-and he's not saying that covetously, he's saying he spent an inordinate amount of money through a proxy to purchase _that exact bottle_ from a Christie's auction shortly after his first profitable deal getting an executive's cut, and it was the crown jewel of his collection until some asshole broke into his apartment and cleared out the entire thing.

"Describe this detective for me again?"

Shifting blue eyes from the shelf to the bar owner, Chuuya presses his shoulders back against the wall he was lounging against and leverages himself off of the wall to drift over and join his lieutenant, foregoing one of the tall three-legged stools to lean his elbows on the bar, lips curled in a smile that is all threat and no mirth as he waits for a reply.

The bar owner figures out where the real power in the room is even before his lieutenant demurs to him with a 'sir,' stepping back. Style and panache are their own weapon, and Chuuya likes to think he's adept with them.

"Ah, blonde guy with a ponytail. Tall, glasses, real high-strung." Chuuya watches him flatly, waiting him out, demanding more details without a word. He _knows_ he's not wrong. His instincts are screaming at him, and he's been searching too long to ignore this. "Wasn't in any kind of police uniform I know of. Had a trainee with him, I guess, but the guy was a real idiot. They ruined a deal I had going, took some hot goods off me. I just want them to stop sniffing around my business. Isn't that what I pay you guys for?"

Chuuya's grin broadens, and he doesn't look away from the bartender as he addresses his underling. "You can wait with the car."

There's a slow blink before he receives a curt nod in return. Chuuya rarely has to get his hands dirty in errands like this, but when he does he's considerate of his people in his way. The vast majority of the force of the Port Mafia lack Abilities. He prefers not to drop buildings down around their ears. It wasn't so long ago that this was him, a small cog in a big machine, not quite as disposable as them, but still aware that his life meant nothing compared to the organization. A little consideration goes a long way in an enterprise like this-Chuuya's people are loyal to _him._ He trains the new recruits, selecting a handful for himself and giving appropriate postings to others. Most have no idea how Chuuya made his mark on the organization, have never heard of Dazai, and know Chuuya as an Executive, not as half of a whole team.

His people are _his_ people. He takes care of his people. And if he tells them to clear out, they clear out.

As the door swings shut again, Chuuya plucks his hat off of his head, rests it on the counter, climbs up onto a stool at last now that there's no one to impress, and smiles his most charming, disarming smile. "We haven't been introduced. My name is Chuuya Nakahara of the Port Mafia. The docks are mine." His own little fiefdom, his territory in the sprawl of Yokohama. It's a dirty, messy, tumultuous little slice of hell, but it's profitable and it's familiar and it's _his._

"I think this is a discussion best held over a nice glass of wine, don't you?" It's a cheap trick, to focus on the wine bottle and drop it from the shelf, using its momentum as it falls and yanking it instead towards himself, hand snapping out to catch the bottle by the neck, too practiced at it to miss. A cheap trick, but the bartender pales, and Chuuya's smile grows wider, teeth bared. "Now. Tell me about the idiot with the detective. Am I right that he came back and sold this to you?"

Because he knows Dazai and his stupid mystery novels. Dazai, and his purloined letters. This is Chuuya's territory within the city, and Chuuya looks at wine the way Dazai looks at women, and Dazai knows both of those facts.

"He uh… I… yeah, I bought it off him. Didn't know what he was holding at all. Just some guy. Tall. Dark hair. Stupid smile. Covered in bandages…" Chuuya's going to have that engraved on Dazai's tombstone. Chuuya runs a hand appreciatively over the smooth curve of the bottle, and then finds exactly what he expected. Deft fingers pluck a small square of paper folded into the punt, the deep inset at the bottom of the bottle keeping it in place and hidden, and he carefully opens it with his fingertips as the bartender digs his own grave by slowly reaching for a hidden pistol beneath the bar. Chuuya indulges him in that little fantasy of security, as he flattens the paper out along the bar.

Dazai _knows him_ , and he knows there are a few hard lines for Chuuya in this world. This is one of the topics they are in perfect agreement on, every time. Chuuya skims over the words, and feels his temper flare white-hot.

"Knowing who I am, now, I want you to think really hard and ask yourself... how does a kid that looks like me end up being raised by the most powerful criminal enterprise in all of Japan…?"

Dazai's penstrokes are a death sentence, and the bastard knows it. He knows it, and he's using Chuuya as his attack dog even now. The square of paper sits visible as an accusation, as Chuuya raises his eyes slowly towards the bartender.

 _Sex trafficking kids. Basement level. Underground tunnel to the warehouse next door._

"Our arrangement was only for you to fence stolen goods."

The one bullet he manages to squeeze out barely leaves the barrel before it's forced down towards the earth, burying itself into the polished wood of the bar, and Chuuya carefully nudges the bottle to safety, seemingly ignoring the man who's hand he is now crushing into the bar with a thought. Fine control like this isn't his hallmark, but if there are kids beneath them, it's better if he doesn't rip this place down stone by stone.

Shitty Dazai. He's here, Chuuya knows. He may be playing a bumbling detective by day now, but whatever he was _actually_ investigating, he stumbled upon something else in that way of his, and instead of letting the law deal with it he fed this man to Chuuya's rage. Dazai is _just as capable_ of killing a man, but this way he gets to pretend his hands are clean, and his new _partner_ remains clueless on what Dazai really is capable of.

He gets to clear out the basement, while Chuuya takes out the trash.

"We parked down the block, so I give it five minutes before my driver comes in to see what's going on. Ten minutes should give my jackass former partner time to finish living out whatever shitty superhero fantasy he's dreamed up for himself." Storm raging outside or not, screaming is more likely to call people in too quickly, and he can't have the man telling anyone else what he's seen. Grabbing the bartender by the back of his hair, he smashes his jaw on the bar, and now he's a step ahead of schedule. "So you and I are going to sit here while I enjoy this glass of wine."

True to his word, Chuuya reaches over the bar and snags a corkscrew and a glass for himself, sniffing judgmentally at it's cleanliness given what's going to be poured into it. He'll have to save the rest of the bottle for when he gets home. Normally he wouldn't actually _drink_ a wine this expensive, but its return is practically a bribe, and since he's giving Dazai the time he may as well take the prize.

Uncorking the wine, Chuuya pours a sip into the glass and lets himself savor it, before beginning again conversationally. The man is wheezing now, relentless pressure pinning him in place. Damn Dazai for using him this way.

"Nothing's a coincidence with that asshole. He played both of us, probably put it in your head to call us, then waited until I walked in to start. He knows this is going to land me in shit, but he's still having me take care of it instead of doing it himself. Because he's a selfish, worthless bastard. I would have killed you anyway, but now that I'm stalling for him to get away, either I'm incompetent or I'm untrustworthy. About the time I show up telling him that Dazai's hooked up with the Armed Detective Agency-that's who the stuck up blonde you described works for, it's my _job_ to know our enemies-then the Boss is going to lean towards untrustworthy because I _am_ actually good at what I do."

Fingers of his companion's unpinned hand fumble towards the gun, scrabbling desperately, and Chuuya slams his blade through his other hand rather than break his conversation or adjust his mental grip when he's pissed but trying to keep this from being over right away. He doesn't torture for fun, it's not like he wants to slowly crush this asshole, he's just keeping him still.

"So either I get killed, or I get shunted to fucking Europe the way the boss has been threatening, to clean up some messes for us overseas, because…" Chuuya gestures at himself with the glass as if it explains everything, and then sets his wine down and checks his phone for the time. He hates this.

"Fuck it. He's had enough time."

Chuuya's gaze when he flicks back to the bartender is merciless. Trafficking _kids_. They're criminals, but for fucks sake he has standards. "You know, people are right. Bartenders do make great listeners."

Three shots, precise and clean to end it, and then he tugs his knife out of the bar top lets the body slump to the floor. Moments later, his subordinate slams through the door, gun drawn, and he gestures at the bar as he finishes his glass of wine.

"Find all of his financial records at the bar and any books in the office. Drop them and the wine bottle in the car when you're done, then lay out the body. Every one of his partners needs to know who he crossed. When they rabbit, we're going to hunt them down." Chuuya plucks his hat back up from the bar, perching it on his head and hopping down from the stool. "I'm going downstairs-he was running an unauthorized operation, I'm going to go clean it up."

He wants a word with that shithead Dazai, if he's still down there.

Finding the entrance, Chuuya wrenches it open heedless of the locks, then bypasses the stairs entirely, light and nimble, to avoid the unconscious body slumped along them. It's the first clear sign that he read the situation right. Not that he had any doubts. He'll have his man drag the guard back, and then press him for information before they execute him. No sign of violence on him, and there's a faint chemical tang lingering in the air, so it's more likely Dazai sealed the place in and used a KO gas. They had a mission once when they were still snot-nosed brats under the command of the former Boss, where Dazai extolled the myriad uses of some anesthetic used to knock out cows, before showing it off on an extraction job. Things were bloody enough back then, having a mission with minimal casualty was practically an act of rebellion. Dazai did it out of curiosity, not mercy.

Dazai probably gassed everyone, victims and thugs alike, and then carried out the kids silently. Easier that way: Dazai's shit with kids, Akutagawa is proof enough of that. Doing it this way also lets him fly under the radar. This wasn't an Agency job, then, just Dazai. The blonde would have done it by the books, cleaned it all up for the authorities to take the rest. Dazai still thinks like a member of the Port Mafia, though, even years later.

The storm is picking up outside and as Chuuya slips lightly down the tunnel, wind from the open door rattles chain-length cages with their locks picked open, and the storm winds howl through the open space of the warehouse down the rough-hewn hall, the rumble of thunder like a physical blow. The guard nearer to the exit is twitching back to awareness, the clean air helping dispel the effects of the gas and making him a threat to leave unattended, so Chuuya times the execution for a crash of lightning to drown out the sound of gunfire. Dazai would say some poetic shit about forces of nature.

Dazai.

The storm muffles the sound of the motor, but Chuuya is hyperalert now, strung too tight, every one of his senses straining for any sign, and he wraps his power around him as he flings himself across the open space, lighter than air and faster than humanly possible. The storm rages around him when he clears the warehouse, making a lash of his hair that stings his cheeks, soaking through the coat almost immediately and leaving his skin clammy and cold, and the storm and Chuuya are at odds now: he can control gravity, but that doesn't free him from competing forces-wind to shove him back when he's airborne, lightning licking down from the sky, rain a gentle push down towards the earth, Chuuya a leaf among them. He could shove himself up, up through the cloud cover and into the thin air beyond, but then he'd lose sight of him. He could rely instead on his velocity, stay low and fling himself into an attack, but that comes with its own issues.

That and a half dozen other half-baked plans die with a simple truth. If he sinks the boat puttering a mere ten… fifteen… yards away, which would be the natural outcome of most of his attacks, that would kill the sleeping kids and only serve to make Dazai soggier than he already is. Chuuya has just enough of a conscience that he can't do that. Instead, he draws his gun again, feet braced wide against the wind, eyes sharp as he waits for his moment.

For a single moment, everything is bright as daylight, sharp and clear as lightning licks across the sky, and the figure at the helm of the boat is visible in picture perfect stark relief. Hair black as ink with the rain, clinging to his forehead and cheeks, Dazai has filled out some since they were teens, and Chuuya can see both of his eyes for the first time since he patched him up at eighteen and Dazai kept the bandages over his eye as if he needed the reminder of his last suicide attempt under Chuuya's watch. The dark circles beneath them are gone, but no matter what side he's on there's nothing soft to his stare as dark eyes meet Chuuya's across the space between them, and he flashes even teeth in a grin that dares Chuuya to actually do his job, and to be the one to grant Dazai his wish for death.

After a lifetime of threats, it's finally the moment of truth... and Chuuya _can't._ Even now, after all these years.

In that split second of Chuuya's hesitation as he decides if he's going to at least wing Dazai, he raises the detonator in his fist, letting Chuuya see it just before he presses the button at the top down with his thumb.

That _jackass._

As explosions go, it's not much of one. The bomb was placed under the water line, attached to the structural supports of the dock, and water geysers up as the dock beneath Chuuya buckles, dumping him unceremoniously into the bay. They both know it's juvenile dunking more than a genuine attempt to kill him, and he sputters back to the surface a minute later, bruised by swimming up through broken boards, hat missing, cell phone ruined, gun lost, coat abandoned as it tried to tangle around him and keep him down. There are fish bobbing to the surface all around him, rank smelling and dead eyed, and he swears he can hear Dazai _laughing_ at him, though the boat is out of sight now, lost to the sheets of rain between them. The boat is staying close to the shoreline as it makes its way towards the Kanagawa Police Station, where it will be found when the storm lifts, Dazai long gone and the children safe.

"I'm going to fucking _kill you_ , asshole!"

Dazai won't be able to hear him over the storm, but it's no reassurance to say aloud any more. Now they both know for certain that it's a lie.

Dragging himself out of the water, Chuuya scowls out into the storm, and stomps with wet slaps of sloshing shoes back towards the warehouse and the bar, back towards his subordinate and his job and the report he knows is going to screw up his standing with his employer.

Dazai, the cunning young executive of the Port Mafia, is now a member of the Armed Detective Agency. So far, they have no idea the weapon they have on their hands, but that won't last forever. And Chuuya let him go.

He's sent to Europe less than a week later, where he'll be gone for nearly two years. On the eve of his return, Dazai is strung up waiting with a smirk on his bruised lips, eyes challenging, and both of them know before he ever breaks the chains holding Dazai that he can't be the one to make him bite the curb.

And Chuuya hates him for that.

Hates him. Really.

 _"Is it painful to be the person who waits? Or is it more painful to be the person who makes others wait?  
Either way, there's no need to wait anymore. That's what is most painful." _

\- Osamu Dazai


End file.
